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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, cinnamon, currants, citron, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ribbon Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter until creamy, then gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Add your choice of flavoring (lemon or nutmeg).

  4. Beat the eggs until very light, then add them along with the milk.

  5. Sift the flour and measure it, then return it to the sieve.

  6. Mix the baking soda and cream of tartar with the flour, then sift it into the bowl of beaten ingredients.

  7. Beat the mixture quickly and vigorously until well combined.

  8. Divide the batter into three equal parts.

  9. Pour two parts into two sheet pans.

  10. Add cinnamon, currants, and chopped citron to the remaining batter.

  11. Pour into the last pan.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake all three cakes until done.

  2. Remove from pans.

  3. Spread a thin layer of jelly on the light cake while warm.

  4. Stack the dark cake on top.

  5. Spread with jelly.

  6. Top with the remaining light cake.

  7. Cover with paper.

  8. Place a thin sheet with weights on top to press for about two hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and richness as they set, and help hold the batter together.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once its starch and proteins set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so the baking soda reacts and the cake rises.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture quickly and vigorously until well combined. Once the flour is added, the baking soda and cream of tartar begin to react and gluten develops. Mixing quickly keeps the leavening active, and the batter must be evenly combined so the three layers rise and bake consistently.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cream, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cream, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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